Tag Archives: Terry Pratchett

I had a new schedule for this blog all worked out (it needs a new layout too, but I’m not quite ready for that) but then an unexpected trip back home put a halt to everything. I had some Hallowe’en-type posts more or less ready to go, but I think I’m going to skip over them rather than putting myself behind for Sci-Fi Month (yay! Sci-Fi Month!). Plus, I haven’t touched a book since my last Read Last Week post, leaving my reading exploits limited to two magazines (both Christmas themed because I’m a sucker who tells myself not to look at Christmas stuff until after Hallowe’en and then never sticks to it) and a bunch of posts over at Ask A Manager. So here’s a Weekly Miscellany post instead of all the things I’ve just mentioned. (Rambly intros are rambly.)

It’s Black History Month – And At Last We’re Celebrating British Heroes. I tried to do a Black History Month display for a few years in the library I used to work in and it was hard. Despite Black History Month covering the contributions of black, Asian and minority ethnic (BAME) in the UK, it’s so hard to find UK specific material. Things have definitely started to change though, which can only be a good thing.

Bookmarked Recipes

Chocolate Chip Meringue Cookies. I half think these might be awful but I’m willing to take the chance in the hope that they’ll be as delicious as they are surprising.

I don’t usually participate in Top Ten Tuesday, but since it’s Sci-Fi Month I’ve decided to go crazy 😉 So please, sit back and enjoy the top ten sci-fi books that are currently sitting in my to-be-read pile. Or tell me that I’m absolutely wrong about all of my choices and recommend better ones.

Devi Morris isn’t your average mercenary. She has plans. Big ones. And a ton of ambition. It’s a combination that’s going to get her killed one day – but not just yet. That is, until she just gets a job on a tiny trade ship with a nasty reputation for surprises. The Glorious Fool isn’t misnamed: it likes to get into trouble, so much so that one year of security work under its captain is equal to five years everywhere else. With odds like that, Devi knows she’s found the perfect way to get the jump on the next part of her Plan. But the Fool doesn’t give up its secrets without a fight, and one year on this ship might be more than even Devi can handle.

Lianne over at Eclectic Tales sent me this two or three years ago and I STILL haven’t read it. It looks so good though, so I really do have to question my reading priorities.

The first of a six book series set after the end of Stargate Atlantis’s final season, Homecoming sees Atlantis return to the Pegasus Galaxy. But the situation in Pegasus has changed. The Wraith are on the verge of unification under the new and powerful Queen Death. She stages a daring raid with one goal: the capture of the only man able to give their ships hyperdrive and lead them to Earth - Dr. Rodney McKay.

I bought the first few books in this continuation series as they were published, but with Fandemonium making it harder and harder to buy physical copies rather than ebooks, my interest tailed off a bit. But! More Shepherd, McKay, Teyla and Ronon! How can I continue to let them languish, unloved, on my shelves?

1916: the Western Front. Private Percy Blakeney wakes up. He is lying on fresh spring grass. He can hear birdsong, and the wind in the leaves in the trees. Where has the mud, blood and blasted landscape of No Man’s Land gone? 2015: Madison, Wisconsin. Cop Monica Jansson is exploring the burned-out home of a reclusive (some said mad, others dangerous) scientist when she finds a curious gadget – a box containing some wiring, a three-way switch and a …potato. It is the prototype of an invention that will change the way Mankind views his world for ever. And that is an understatement if ever there was one…

When the first book in this series came out, I decided that I’d wait until they were all published before I read any of them. Then Terry Pratchett died, and now they’re loaded with expectation which makes reading them a bit daunting.

In a future when Earth is a toxic, abandoned world and humanity has spread into the outer solar system to survive, the tightly controlled use of time travel holds the key to maintaining a fragile existence among the other planets and their moons. James Griffin-Mars is a chronman–a convicted criminal recruited for his unique psychological makeup to undertake the most dangerous job there is: missions into Earth’s past to recover resources and treasure without altering the timeline. Most chronmen never reach old age, and James is reaching his breaking point. On his final mission, James meets scientist Elise Kim, who is fated to die during the destruction of an oceanic rig. Against his training and common sense, James brings her back to the future with him, saving her life, but turning them both into fugitives. Remaining free means losing themselves in the wild and poisonous wastes of Earth, and discovering what hope may yet remain for humanity’s home world.

This one has been sitting on my shelf since last Christmas which, compared to some of the other books on this list, isn’t too bad.

In a near-future, half-flooded world governed by technobureaucracy and ultraconformity, where human contact is abhorrent and passion unheard of, William Fowke already has a reputation as a trouble-maker. And now he insists that the Wall – the engineering marvel that keeps what remains of America’s East Coast from being inundated by the Atlantic Ocean – is leaking. Convicted of sedition and ‘excluded’, Fowke begins a horrific, thrilling odyssey through a nether world of gulags. With the exception of agent Julia Keller, who arrested him, everyone is hostile, including his former bosses and fellow prisoners, leaving Fowke excluded even by the excluded. And desperate to get back to his threatened Wall to sound the alarm.

A grand adventure that spans galaxies and lifetimes, A Confusion of Princes is also a page-turning action adventure. These are the three deaths of Prince Khemri. Told in his own words, we follow him as he trains to become a Prince of the Empire, an enhanced human being, equipped with biological and technological improvements that make him faster, stronger and smarter than any ordinary person. Not to mention the ultimate benefit: should he die, and be deemed worthy, he will be reborn…Which is just as well, because no sooner has Prince Khemri graduated to full Princehood than he learns the terrible truth behind the Empire: there are a million princes, and all of them want each other dead, because there can only be one Emperor…

I’ve read a short story set in this universe, and I’m a massive fan of Garth Nix, so why is this still waiting to be read a year after I bought it?

In the aftermath of the uprising, the people of Silo 18 are coming to terms with a new order. Some embrace the change, others fear the unknown; none have control of their fate. The Silo is still in danger. There are those set on its destruction. Jules knows they must be stopped. The battle has been won. The war is just beginning.

I absolutely adored the first two parts of this trilogy, but have yet to start this one despite having had it on loan from the library since *cough* 2014.

ClearVista is used by everyone and can predict anything. It’s a daily lifesaver, predicting weather to traffic to who you should befriend. Laurence Walker wants to be the next President of the United States. ClearVista will predict his chances. It will predict whether he’s the right man for the job. It will predict that his son can only survive for 102 seconds underwater. It will predict that Laurence’s life is about to collapse in the most unimaginable way.

Another one I’ve had out from the library since 2014. I am a terrible book borrower!

Amy Harper Bellafonte is six years old and her mother thinks she’s the most important person in the whole world. She is. Anthony Carter doesn’t think he could ever be in a worse place than Death Row. He’s wrong. FBI agent Brad Wolgast thinks something beyond imagination is coming. It is.

I read about six chapters of The Passage when it first came out in paperback, but put it down as it wasn’t what I was in the mood for at the time. Not long after, I bought the hardback, and it’s been sitting on my shelves forlornly ever since.

Lovelace was once merely a ship’s artificial intelligence. When she wakes up in an new body, following a total system shut-down and reboot, she has to start over in a synthetic body, in a world where her kind are illegal. She’s never felt so alone. But she’s not alone, not really. Pepper, one of the engineers who risked life and limb to reinstall Lovelace, is determined to help her adjust to her new world. Because Pepper knows a thing or two about starting over. Together, Pepper and Lovey will discover that, huge as the galaxy may be, it’s anything but empty.

I’ve only owned this one for a little over a week, so my guilt levels aren’t too high for not having gotten around to it yet.

14 Girl Power Comic Books You Should Definitely Read This Summer. I’m not a fan of the Wonder Woman or Harley Quinn series they’ve included, though I’m a fan of other incarnations of both characters, and I give my regular reminder that the artist of Rat Queens is a domestic abuser. These things aside, this is a pretty good starter list for comics with kick-ass female characters. I haven’t heard of Concrete Park before but am definitely going to look into it because it looks brilliant.

Lost Cities. A series of articles over at The Guardian telling the story of cities history has almost forgotten. Some excellent stuff in there.

100 Must-Read Titles About Women’s History. I love that this doesn’t fall into the trap of thinking that white Western history is world history. That said, I’ve only read 1 of the books on the list (Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi)…

Meet The Great British Bake Off Illustrator: Tom Hovey. An old article, but with Bake Off coming back this week (yay!) it’s still relevant. The illustrations of the bakes is such a wonderful part of the show. I’m trying quite hard to overlook the fact that it’s a job he got because he knew the right people though. Britain’s ‘meritocracy’ strikes again.

Postal, Volume 1 – Matt Hawkins et. al. Eden is a town populated by criminals where crime is strictly forbidden. But nothing is quite as it seems, as we discover when a woman is murdered. The narrator in this is an outsider in two ways – he’s not a criminal, and he has aspergers – which gives this an interest it wouldn’t have otherwise.

Trees, Volume 1: In Shadow: Warren Ellis & Jason Howard. I really enjoyed this. Ten years ago, alien artefacts that are referred to as trees, landed all over the Earth and have just sat there being mysterious and doing nothing, until now. What is their purpose and who sent them?

Milly-Molly-Mandy’s School Days – Joyce Lankester Brisley. I picked this up primarily because Joyce Lankester Brisley is the sister of Nina K. Brisley, the illustrator of the early Chalet School books. It didn’t disappoint. The illustrations were sweet and the story was ridiculous but charming. I’ll definitely be reading more.

Noonday – Pat Barker. A wonderful World War II novel that continues Pat Barkers record of writing touching, though-provoking books that never wander into maudlin territory.

The Magicians – Lev Grossman. I absolutely hated Quentin. HATED him. I also wasn’t particularly into the idea that this school lets its students wander around the place largely unsupervised and almost always drunk. I enjoyed the magic itself, and the world building generally enough that I did pick up the sequel though.